FCB Cape Town: Victims stand up for Western Cape Government ambos

December 5, 2018

Vi ctims stand up FCB Cape Town has helped The Western Cape Government (WCG) to send a number of powerful messages to the people of South Africa in the last few years, each in its own uniquely creative way. The partners’ newest campaign reminds people that abuse is not the right response for the help that emergency medical staff (EMS) provide.

Too often paramedics are hindered, or even prevented, from doing their job. Worse, their own lives are sometimes threatened. And “sometimes” is becoming a daily occurrence for too many of them.

Head of Emergency Medical Services, Dr Shaheem de Vries, explained, “EMS staff are faced with very difficult decisions every day – life and death decisions. For many in the emergency services, some of the bravest and most courageous of these decisions is also the one they make the most often. That is, the decision to come to work.

“This is as a consequence of what has become a daily threat to EMS providers who may, when responding to a call, be stabbed or shot at by criminals intending to rob them of any valuables they possess. It’s hard enough to deal with knowing that your decisions can make the difference between life and death, but to know that you have to make these decisions in a situation where you yourself could be at risk is virtually untenable.

“The EMS staff are incredibly brave people, and we and the citizens they serve, want to acknowledge and thank them.”

The campaign includes a documentary and an anthem.

In the documentary, stab victim, Ashraf Solomons, is given the chance to say thank you to the paramedics who saved his life and are therefore a reason why his daughter is alive today also.

The anthem is a free verse poem narrated by a number of people whose lives have been saved by paramedics.

“The injured person and the attackers are from the same community, which means that an attack on an EMS, is an attack on that community,” noted FCB Cape Town chief creative officer, Mike Barnwell.

“We hope that by telling the stories of real survivors, the perpetrators of the attacks, as well as the community at large, will come to understand that, when they attack the EMS, they are attacking their mother, their father, their brother or sister, daughter or son.”